I think this is the start of a great conversation and would like to read more of your thoughts on what healthy sexual desire looks like from men. At 32 years old and single in NYC, I find it a struggle finding the balance between being too avoidant in attempting to be "well socialized" with my lustier desires.
Questions like, is it ok to make it clear you're looking or checking someone out (without being creepy)? Or approaching a stranger and telling them you were drawn to them by some attractive feature they have.
I feel we have left men in a confused state of not knowing how to properly channel and thrive in their masculinity and sexuality.
"But there are some important caveats here. Like all differences between the sexes, the distributions overlap. Some women have a “male” attitude to sex, some men have a “female” one. One of the huge gains of the sexual revolution has been to reduce the shaming of women who have sex for its own sake, perhaps with a number of men. There’s clearly a danger of going too far the other way, and shaming women who prefer not to. We should aim for a world that recognizes diversity in sexual preferences, in women as much as men, without any of the outliers incurring social stigma.
There are no sluts, and there are no prudes."
I think this makes sense in theory, and is noble as an aspiration, but it neglects the nature of norms. They are not capable of as much nuance as you are suggesting. They dictate what is right and what is wrong. And to say one thing is right is the same as saying its inverse is wrong. I just do not think you can recognize the inherent truth in what you say about the sexual natures of men and women being different and then also say that we should have norms around sex but no stigmas. Every norm has a corresponding stigma. Inclusion/no judgement is an anti-identity that is corrosive to creating a unified culture with a strong sense of self.
It seems to me that the most completely defining experience in life – more defining than the culture one was born into; more than whether born rich or poor – is whether one was born a boy or a girl. By “defining” I don’t mean in the sense that a feminist might mean it; I mean in the sense of the sheer imaginative leap it would take to know what it feels like to be the opposite sex. I have only ever managed the faintest of imaginative glimpses of what it must feel like to be a woman...no matter how hard I may have tried.
There’s not much positive that can be said about Mao Zedong but his famous "Women hold up half the sky" beautifully expresses a profound truth about the bond between the male and female halves of humanity.... a bond that transcends any other kind; ideological, tribal or otherwise. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-androgyny-syndrome
Look, men writing about what they think women’s sexuality is like based on anecdotal evidence and “facts” (mostly written by other men, by the way) is…not a good look. The whole “women need a reason to have sex” idea shuns a whole group
of women who have high sex drives, and it furthers the very rape-y notion of “men just want sex and you women need to accept that and give it to them”. I know you’re not perpetuating that viewpoint, but some of the verbiage in your piece aligns with that. In addition, having a high sex drive does not make a woman “masculine”, just like how a man having a lower sex drive or more relational sex drive doesn’t make him “feminine”. Sometimes, people do or don’t want sex, no matter what gender they are, and that’s it.
I honestly just want to commend your restraint in deciding not to add a chapter on the subject of sex, even though you obviously did research and thinking into it.
As a professional since years in the field of sexuality, I see untold damage spread by people who read and repeat books and “research” without the ability to source from a solid basis of their own direct experience. Sex is a topic as vast as the sky. Bowing to the sanctity of its nuances and veils is a political act in itself. Thank you for that sensitivity.
I agree I do believe we have to respect the physiological differences between men and women but also allow for nuances and avoiding all or nothing statements.
I like to look at the male animal and the female animal, since we moderns tend to forget that we are just that.
With over two millions years of evolution and about 300,000 years of consistent homo sapiens behaviors, all this surely overrides the last few centuries -- and wins the sex & gender poker game of the last 60 years with a royal flush over two deuces.
Sure, there are women with strong sex drives and otherwise a healthy lustiness. But when we look at men in their prime (15-35), most tend to think with their horns (both straight and gay men). Now, when we look at women, generally, from about age 35 - 50 or 55, many females out-lust and outlast their male age counterparts.
Of course, age range, childrearing and local culture and religion matter. A lot.
Also, as soon as Progressives and many Democrats drop the toxic masculinty label and lighten up on The Patriarchy (as if America and western Europe are just like Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, and much of Asia)... the sooner we start getting young males back in our fold, and winning elections that we should not have lost in the first place.
One often overlooked aspect of the socialization process you mention, is that we don't teach young boys how to distinguish between their inner selves and their biological bodies. Unlike women who have a more tangible connection to their physical selves through the painful reminder of menstruation, boys are often socialized to view their masculine self as a single indivisible entity and thus are more prone to let themselves be lead by sexual urges.
My take, is that instead of teaching boys to either suppress, control, or demonize their sexual needs, we should teach them from a young age that these urges come from their bodies responding to hormones and chemicals meant for a biological purpose which might not presently apply to their context, needs, relationships, or objectives and more often than not becomes an inconvenience.
As fathers and men, our responsibility is to help boys develop strategies to manage these urges in healthy ways like:
- Recognizing the utilitarian nature of masturbation
- Understanding that porn is a drug and should be consumed with caution
- Promoting diets that reduce chemicals that trigger sexual urges
- Treating extreme cases like porn addiction with medication
Currently, society deals with men's sexual urges with a puritanical mindset and not really focusing on what they need, but instead as a way to avoid them becoming a danger to others, and this has proven to be completely unsustainable.
I disagree with some of this … mine and my boyfriends sexual appetite is the other way round and certainly for me it’s that I just ‘need a place’, and I’m always in the mood, always initiating, whereas for him he needs to be in the right headspace and not stressed about anything otherwise he goes weeks where he does not want it and pushes my initiations away. And I have girl friends who’ve had the exact same issue with their male partner. I find it quite difficult to accept at times! I do believe that men always being ‘on’ for sex is a myth and quite old fashioned.
He said that, though. "Like all differences between the sexes, the distributions overlap. Some women have a “male” attitude to sex, some men have a “female” one. "
“They learn how to approach respectfully and appropriately. They learn how to gracefully accept “no” for an answer, and they learn that rejection is an inescapable part of the enterprise. These are hard-won skills, and ones we need to help all boys and men develop. But we won’t do that by denying the reality of male sexual desire in the first place, or by only equipping boys and men with a long list of “don’ts”, important though those are, without some “do’s” as well.”
YES YES AND YES. literally no notes, loved this entire thing, just subbed, and about to start watching white lotus (i too am heavily behind the curve)
Boys with a crush on the girl next door are confronted at some point with a mountain of evidence on Pornhub that this is WHAT SHE SECRETLY WANTS. Its beyond traumatizing and is DESIGNED to turn boyhood chivalry into HATE. ITS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. ITS TERRORISM. TOTAL MEDIA AND "EXPERT" SILENCE MINIMIZING AND EXCUSES. CSA.
I think this is the start of a great conversation and would like to read more of your thoughts on what healthy sexual desire looks like from men. At 32 years old and single in NYC, I find it a struggle finding the balance between being too avoidant in attempting to be "well socialized" with my lustier desires.
Questions like, is it ok to make it clear you're looking or checking someone out (without being creepy)? Or approaching a stranger and telling them you were drawn to them by some attractive feature they have.
I feel we have left men in a confused state of not knowing how to properly channel and thrive in their masculinity and sexuality.
"But there are some important caveats here. Like all differences between the sexes, the distributions overlap. Some women have a “male” attitude to sex, some men have a “female” one. One of the huge gains of the sexual revolution has been to reduce the shaming of women who have sex for its own sake, perhaps with a number of men. There’s clearly a danger of going too far the other way, and shaming women who prefer not to. We should aim for a world that recognizes diversity in sexual preferences, in women as much as men, without any of the outliers incurring social stigma.
There are no sluts, and there are no prudes."
I think this makes sense in theory, and is noble as an aspiration, but it neglects the nature of norms. They are not capable of as much nuance as you are suggesting. They dictate what is right and what is wrong. And to say one thing is right is the same as saying its inverse is wrong. I just do not think you can recognize the inherent truth in what you say about the sexual natures of men and women being different and then also say that we should have norms around sex but no stigmas. Every norm has a corresponding stigma. Inclusion/no judgement is an anti-identity that is corrosive to creating a unified culture with a strong sense of self.
It seems to me that the most completely defining experience in life – more defining than the culture one was born into; more than whether born rich or poor – is whether one was born a boy or a girl. By “defining” I don’t mean in the sense that a feminist might mean it; I mean in the sense of the sheer imaginative leap it would take to know what it feels like to be the opposite sex. I have only ever managed the faintest of imaginative glimpses of what it must feel like to be a woman...no matter how hard I may have tried.
There’s not much positive that can be said about Mao Zedong but his famous "Women hold up half the sky" beautifully expresses a profound truth about the bond between the male and female halves of humanity.... a bond that transcends any other kind; ideological, tribal or otherwise. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-androgyny-syndrome
Look, men writing about what they think women’s sexuality is like based on anecdotal evidence and “facts” (mostly written by other men, by the way) is…not a good look. The whole “women need a reason to have sex” idea shuns a whole group
of women who have high sex drives, and it furthers the very rape-y notion of “men just want sex and you women need to accept that and give it to them”. I know you’re not perpetuating that viewpoint, but some of the verbiage in your piece aligns with that. In addition, having a high sex drive does not make a woman “masculine”, just like how a man having a lower sex drive or more relational sex drive doesn’t make him “feminine”. Sometimes, people do or don’t want sex, no matter what gender they are, and that’s it.
Hi Richard, this makes me want to write about Women Wanting Men
I honestly just want to commend your restraint in deciding not to add a chapter on the subject of sex, even though you obviously did research and thinking into it.
As a professional since years in the field of sexuality, I see untold damage spread by people who read and repeat books and “research” without the ability to source from a solid basis of their own direct experience. Sex is a topic as vast as the sky. Bowing to the sanctity of its nuances and veils is a political act in itself. Thank you for that sensitivity.
I agree I do believe we have to respect the physiological differences between men and women but also allow for nuances and avoiding all or nothing statements.
Good solid stuff, Richard.
I like to look at the male animal and the female animal, since we moderns tend to forget that we are just that.
With over two millions years of evolution and about 300,000 years of consistent homo sapiens behaviors, all this surely overrides the last few centuries -- and wins the sex & gender poker game of the last 60 years with a royal flush over two deuces.
Sure, there are women with strong sex drives and otherwise a healthy lustiness. But when we look at men in their prime (15-35), most tend to think with their horns (both straight and gay men). Now, when we look at women, generally, from about age 35 - 50 or 55, many females out-lust and outlast their male age counterparts.
Of course, age range, childrearing and local culture and religion matter. A lot.
Also, as soon as Progressives and many Democrats drop the toxic masculinty label and lighten up on The Patriarchy (as if America and western Europe are just like Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, and much of Asia)... the sooner we start getting young males back in our fold, and winning elections that we should not have lost in the first place.
One often overlooked aspect of the socialization process you mention, is that we don't teach young boys how to distinguish between their inner selves and their biological bodies. Unlike women who have a more tangible connection to their physical selves through the painful reminder of menstruation, boys are often socialized to view their masculine self as a single indivisible entity and thus are more prone to let themselves be lead by sexual urges.
My take, is that instead of teaching boys to either suppress, control, or demonize their sexual needs, we should teach them from a young age that these urges come from their bodies responding to hormones and chemicals meant for a biological purpose which might not presently apply to their context, needs, relationships, or objectives and more often than not becomes an inconvenience.
As fathers and men, our responsibility is to help boys develop strategies to manage these urges in healthy ways like:
- Recognizing the utilitarian nature of masturbation
- Understanding that porn is a drug and should be consumed with caution
- Promoting diets that reduce chemicals that trigger sexual urges
- Treating extreme cases like porn addiction with medication
Currently, society deals with men's sexual urges with a puritanical mindset and not really focusing on what they need, but instead as a way to avoid them becoming a danger to others, and this has proven to be completely unsustainable.
Hilarious that you included the aside about technical high schools. Love it
I disagree with some of this … mine and my boyfriends sexual appetite is the other way round and certainly for me it’s that I just ‘need a place’, and I’m always in the mood, always initiating, whereas for him he needs to be in the right headspace and not stressed about anything otherwise he goes weeks where he does not want it and pushes my initiations away. And I have girl friends who’ve had the exact same issue with their male partner. I find it quite difficult to accept at times! I do believe that men always being ‘on’ for sex is a myth and quite old fashioned.
He said that, though. "Like all differences between the sexes, the distributions overlap. Some women have a “male” attitude to sex, some men have a “female” one. "
Ah ok I must’ve missed that bit. That I certainly agree with.
All good. I just did the same thing to someone else yesterday!
Very interesting - The fact of male sexual desire may be a fact of life, but how it is expressed is vitally important,
“They learn how to approach respectfully and appropriately. They learn how to gracefully accept “no” for an answer, and they learn that rejection is an inescapable part of the enterprise. These are hard-won skills, and ones we need to help all boys and men develop. But we won’t do that by denying the reality of male sexual desire in the first place, or by only equipping boys and men with a long list of “don’ts”, important though those are, without some “do’s” as well.”
YES YES AND YES. literally no notes, loved this entire thing, just subbed, and about to start watching white lotus (i too am heavily behind the curve)
Season 2 of White Lotus is a masterclass on man/woman dynamics.
Once you presume porn Is healthy for a male population, you are lost. That is the problem here.
Boys with a crush on the girl next door are confronted at some point with a mountain of evidence on Pornhub that this is WHAT SHE SECRETLY WANTS. Its beyond traumatizing and is DESIGNED to turn boyhood chivalry into HATE. ITS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. ITS TERRORISM. TOTAL MEDIA AND "EXPERT" SILENCE MINIMIZING AND EXCUSES. CSA.